The come-ons are everywhere-social media experts urging you to sign up now to unlock the secrets of social media success.

A typical example:

“Want to launch a revolutionary, buzz-building social media-based marketing campaign? You’re in the right place. As blog strategists, we develop revolutionary blog-based marketing programs and high-yield blog advertising campaigns that make marketing fun, generate great buzz, build your brand, and make you a respected part of the social media community.”

Indeed, there is no shortage of social media experts promising to help companies create killer social media campaigns that will rake in riches. They have sprouted up like dandelions.

And there’s the rub. A backlash has erupted against social media experts by those who see them as a growing horde of hustlers, pretenders, imposters, and charlatans.

The following sampling of headlines from across the Web reflects the ire and contempt being unleashed upon social media experts:

• “Invasion of the Social Media Experts”
• “What’s it take to be a social media expert? Not much, apparently”
• “Is There Really Such a Thing as a Social Media Expert”
• “Here an expert, there an expert…everywhere an expert”
• “Could Your Social Media “Expert” be a Fake?”
• “Will the real social media expert please stand up?”
• “You’re NOT a social media expert, you idiot”
• ” Social Media ‘Experts’ are the Cancer of Twitter (and Must Be Stopped)”
• “7 ways to spot a social media snake oil salesperson”
• “Top 25 Ways to Tell if Your Social Media Expert Is a Carpetbagger”

Continues @ http://www.ciozone.com

important notice: this is the unabridged version of a post first published onbnet.co.uk

After a decade and a half of evangelisation by the likes of Seth Godin (re his book entitled: Permission Marketing) and those who followed in his footsteps, Marketers are now finally waking up to the idea that pre-formatted communications aren’t the right way to engage with customers (re Forrester’s Laura Ramos’s report on why Marketers, even in B2B have to get to grips with a new communications paradigm). So now is the time to hone these story-telling skills in your Marketing department and write valuable content for the Web. But what do I mean by valuable content? I mean content that brings value to your visitors, which could possibly initiate discussions, questions and comments (I’m talking about articulate comments, not cyber-babble).

In this article, I have expressed my views about writing for the web (also summed up in a creative commons slideshare presentation per below), based on what I have been able to implement successfully in the field over the past 15 years, in order to

find out how that can be done:

Step 1: the idea that web text has to be terse is not a good idea

It is often said that people don’t read on screens and that as a consequence you shouldn’t write long pages and keep long stories short. There are several reasons why this is not relevant:

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Corporate giants are losing power to communities of consumers–and your company can benefit.

When it comes to the evolution of the Web and of social media, keeping up seems like an impossible task for most business executives.  Nonetheless, keeping up is critically important in order to remain relevant.  The good news that I take away from a recent study by Forrester Research, is that the evolution of the “social Web” will help level the marketing playing field between large and small organizations.  The report was written by a Forrester senior analyst, Jeremiah Owyang, who, not so coincidentally, has a terrific blog, Web Strategy.

In the past, large companies had all the cards.  They had lots of money, lots of people and lots of intrusive but effective messaging.  In the old era of in-your-face marketing, corporate giants could control results in many cases by simply outspending smaller rivals.

Continues @ http://contentmarketingtoday.com

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